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Drug services professional

Around half of current injecting drug users will have hepatitis C, although this prevalence rate varies across the country. Find here tools, resources and other relevant documents to help drugs service staff raise awareness of hepatitis C amongst service users, and improve testing and access to care.

Showing 1 to 10 of 231 resources

Public Health England published its annual 'Hepatitis C in England' report on 30th May 2020. This reporting document monitors the England's progress towards its goal of eliminating the virus by 2030 and contains breakdowns of how testing and treatment are being delivered by service type, demographic and local area. This year's report notes significant increases in treatment availability over the last few years. It also suggests there have been increases in access to treatment for the people who inject drugs.

This 2020 update on drug-related infectious diseases from the EMCDDA (European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction) aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the current situation with regard to the epidemiological picture of drug-related infectious diseases in Europe up to January 2020. It highlights some recent innovative responses to the problem and argues that early diagnosis through testing as well as improving links to treatment and care are crucial steps towards reaching global health goals.

This Scottish Drugs Forum-produced guidance is aimed at those planning and designing services as well as those managing and delivering services for people who use drugs, in particular those people on opioid substitution therapy (OST) and people who inject drugs. The guidance includes a section on blood borne virus (BBV) testing, noting that "all delayed BBV results from dry blood spot tests must be proactively followed up in a timely manner once COVID-19 related restrictions allow".

This report from Public Health England breaks down the number of laboratory reports of hepatitis C tests carried out in England and Wales between October and December 2019 by age and gender. A breakdown is also provided by ODN in England.

Published in March 2020, this report from The King's Fund on health and care for people who sleep rough focusses on reducing barriers people face to accessing healthcare services and on commissioning appropriate services. The report argues that to improve health outcomes for people sleeping rough we need local authorities to team up with charities and community services; we need both a population health approach and a place-based approach; we need co-production with people with lived experience of sleeping rough; and we need staff working with this group to be properly recruited and supported.

On 2nd March 2020, the London Joint Working Group on Substance Use and Hepatitis C (LJWG) launched a 'Routemap to eliminating hepatitis C in London'. This document sets out the opportunities for improving hepatitis C care in London, based around five pillars of improvement: reducing stigma; engaging people who are under-served by traditional health systems; working with GPs to find the undiagnosed; reducing pathway attrition; aligning hepatitis C and HIV public health efforts.

This report from Public Health England provides an update on the recent epidemiology of hepatitis C in London. Among the report's statistics are an estimate that 63% of people who inject drugs (PWID) in London had ever been infected with hepatitis C in 2018, with 41% of those ever infected having a current hepatitis C infection. It is estimated that 18% of PWID were unaware of their infection (lower than the 35% unaware in England as a whole). In 2017/18, 87% of eligible clients of drug treatment services received a hepatitis C test, a small increase from 86% in 2016/2017.